We had the pleasure of interviewing Elliott Ambers all about being a Vtuber!

1. What inspired you to become a Vtuber?

I’ve always been on and off with the idea of becoming a streamer and there were a lot of things that made it harder for me to do so at the time. When the world sort of shut down, I had learned about vtubing from a friend who explained to me that he paid five dollars for a cute anime girl to say his name (I later found out that he superchatted Inugami Korone). At the time, I thought that was kind of odd since I never focused all too much on streamer culture but by the time Hololive EN had debuted, I found myself falling down that same rabbit hole. I ended up religiously watching HoloMyth streams and also membered my oshi because I just really enjoyed their content. At some point in December I had the idea to become a vtuber myself because it would let me stream without having to show my face which is important as a teacher who is trying to not have his students find him online.

2. Tell us about your model!

My Live2D model went through a few iterations; I had first went to one of my friends to help draft up a design and they came to me with these four; you can probably guess which one I went with! After coming up with the designs, I went to @norshiex, my artist who did an excellent job drawing my model! I had a couple of inspirations when coming up with the design; the two characters I distinctly remember having as references were Canas from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and Ledah from Riviera: The Promised Land. I wanted a sort of magical, scholarly looking outfit, but I also really wanted the cravat and cloak that the Grim Angels in Riviera have. Also, monocles are cool.

As for my VRoid model, I wanted something that looked more idol like since I’ve been doing more karaokes and I’ve been trying to improve my singing. I had gotten an outfit off of booth and pretty much had the default VRoid face which looked… not the greatest. However, a couple of months later, I was talking with my good friend and now model artist @GoldenKenjiVT who took my VRoid and improved it significantly, from face shape to hair shading to skin textures and so much more! Maybe one day I’ll get full body tracking and be able to dance like the idol I wish I could be, haha.

3. What is the best part about being a Vtuber?

I think the best part about being a VTuber, as cliche as it sounds, is the friends we’ve made along the way and the communities I’ve found myself a part of. It has been a long time since I’ve gotten myself involved in any sort of online community but I’ve met so many people over the past year and a quarter who I consider to be very close friends now. Being able to share the things I love with people and having them riff off of it is honestly incredible. It always catches me off guard when someone comes to me and talks about something goofy I did on stream because it reminds me that even if for a moment, I’m doing something that people find enjoyable enough to keep in their minds.

4. What would you tell someone who wants to become a Vtuber? Any advice?

I think an important thing about getting into vtubing is that you should make sure you really enjoy content creation before you commit hard to it. Prior to becoming a Vtuber I had streamed in the past and did enjoy it, but I’ve seen a lot of other people who invest a large sum of money only to learn that they didn’t enjoy streaming or making videos and then go on permanent hiatus. There’s nothing wrong with starting as a PNG or even not having a model at all. Being pre-debut and doing test streams is nice because it gives you time to make sure you’re comfortable with streaming and also lets you build up an audience before you get to show everyone your fancy new model! Honestly, if I could have done anything differently at the start it would have been to start streaming as a PNG instead of trying to copy Hololive and do a debut stream without giving myself any sort of presence in any community (orz).

5. Goals for this year?

Numbers-wise, I’d like to be able to reach 1k followers on both Twitter and Twitch. It’s not something fully in my control, but I’ll keep doing my best to reach more people! In regards to something more in my control, I’d like to improve more as a vocalist and will be starting up vocal lessons soon. I’ve already put out a couple of song covers in the past, but I want to be able to improve the quality of them by improving my own vocals!

6. Where can people support you?

I’m on both twitter and twitch at @ElliottAmbers! Make sure you remember it’s a double L and a double T because everyone forgets at least once (and some people I talk to regularly still forget!)